Archive for the 'Design' Category
February 24th, 2010
Today, Delivra participated in an interview with Webmasterradio.fm and their Inboxed Show highlighting best practices and emerging trends in technology and email marketing. The show aired LIVE from the LeadsCon Las Vegas event where industry experts are currently gathered to learn, network and share effective lead generation strategies.
During our portion of the interview, Delivra responded to Jon Fondy’s questions regarding a recent BtoB Ask the Expert article titled, How do you get a recipient to read to the end of your email? We were able to share tips on how to ensure readers get to the end of your email. Here are a few of the tips discussed:
- Link out to additional content
- Stay above the fold
- Be concise
Want to hear more? Listen to the podcast today! Have best practice questions, contact me at cnewton@delivra.com and I would be happy to help.
Carissa Newton | Marketing
February 22nd, 2010
ALT text is not something to ignore when putting together your email creative. Not all email clients will display your images’ ALT tags, but they’re still worth using. In the likely event that a recipient will have images blocked upon viewing your email content, the ALT text is what they will see first; if the text is visible and enticing, more recipients will open and click through your mailings.
It’s best to make your ALT text concise and clear, but try to use enough text to convey the content of the image. If you have a shiny orange image button covered with text and photos of packages, set it’s ALT attribute with just the text needed to convey the value – i.e. “50% Off Shipping – Click Here” (assuming you were, unfortunately, unable to use a bulletproof button in the first place).
Read more of “Don’t forget ALT text in your emails”…
February 15th, 2010
The 2010 EEC Email Evolution Conference once again attracted the movers and shakers of the e-mail marketing industry. Here is a handful of interesting ideas discussed that I thought were worth sharing.
- Video gives a consistent 2-3x click-through rate compared to e-mails without video.
- Provide an opt-in form on your company Facebook page to help grow your list.
- Track where your opt-ins come from so that your can budget more time and money into developing those streams.
- Spend time on your welcome message…get it right and make it count.
- How do your e-mails look with images turned off? Can your recipient get enough information that would drive them to turn on the images?
- E-mails help your Customer Life Cycle…Welcome, Engage, Reward, Retain, Reconnect/Acquire.
- You need to sell your e-mail program…prospects need to know why they should sign up.
Good information, great debates, and excellent panels…I look forward to EEC 2011.
Scott Cramer | Sales & Business Development
February 11th, 2010
I was intrigued by the the winning campaigns in MarketingSherpa’s fifth-annual Email Marketing Awards. So intrigued in fact, that I wanted to share the winning categories and where you can find this information. Drumroll please……..
Read more of “Email Marketing Awards Gallery 2010: Winning Campaign Details and Creative Samples”…
February 10th, 2010
I attended a local bridal tradeshow with a friend of mine who is getting married soon. When we arrived we signed in with our contact information. I was asked to give my e-mail address. I threw caution to the wind and gave them my e-mail address. My e-mail address was then given to all the exhibitors. Lucky me and wow has my inbox (and junk folder) been flooded!!
I have been on the other side of that tradeshow booth. In my previous job, I helped manage, attend and follow up with booth attendees for a few tradeshows. They did about 15 tradeshows a year and we came back from those shows thinking we hit the jackpot with all of these e-mail addresses. So, I am guilty of this too.
Read more of “Tradeshow…Rules of Engagement”…
February 8th, 2010
Last week, Delivra exhibited and attended the EEC’s Email Experience Evolution Conference in Miami. The conference was a chance to meet email marketers from around the world and hear their best practice insights for email marketing. The event was an excellent chance for us to learn what email marketers are doing and what works. The overriding theme of the event was email best practices and how email can serve as a bridge to multiple channels. Here is a Top 5 List of what we learned at the event.
The conference opened with Brian Harniman of Kayak speaking about how they have used email marketing to efficiently communicate with travel subscribers around the world. A relative newcomer to the travel marketplace, Kayak has to attract new customers in a highly competitive marketplace, but also do so efficiently given their size and resources. A veteran to email marketing, Brian outlined how Kayak has built their email marketing efforts through the use of testing. He emphasized that testing is one of the most important methods to employ to ensure you are engaging your audience regardless of size.
Read more of “Email Bridges Multiple Channels: EEC Conference Wrap-up”…
January 20th, 2010
Let’s say you’re just about done putting together your email content. It’s approved to send out and you’re proud of how great it looks. You send yourself a test email for one final check… and it’s completely blown apart! What do you do? Before you light your computer on fire and throw it at the nearest intern, check to see if it’s one of these top 4 issues.
January 6th, 2010
Every now and again, I have a client ask me if it’s possible to animate their email. Since it’s a bad idea to try to use Flash or embedded video, we can’t use animations either, right? Wrong—you can! Animated GIF images can definitely be used in your email campaigns, and if done right, can work to improve your results.
Read more of “Design Basics: Animation”…
January 4th, 2010
During a demo of our software a few months ago, a prospective client–the owner of an agency specializing in web design–commented that he admired the features of our product but was concerned about giving his clients access to a user interface that looked “too much like Windows 95.”
Ouch. I couldn’t argue with him, though. Delivra had added many features over the years, but we had never taken time to refresh or upgrade the appearance of the application. As a result, the plain-brown (or, more literally, plain-blue) wrapper around our software was not an accurate reflection of the advanced features we had to offer.
Read more of “Delivra’s New Look and Feel”…
December 2nd, 2009
When creating the content for your emails, the dimensions are an important aspect to consider. The size and layout can have an effect on the success of your campaign. Below, I’ve listed a couple of basic pointers to keep in mind.
Width
The typical email has a width of 600 to 650 pixels. This may sound pretty small – but if you create your email any wider, your recipients may have to scroll both vertically and horizontally to view the email in its entirety… making it a pain to read. Create your email any narrower and your email may become very long in order to fit all of your content.
Despite the width norm of 600-650 pixels, formatting emails horizontally seems to be a growing trend among some retailers. The very helpful Smith-Harmon blog has highlighted various designs in horizontal format, which seem to be generating good results. (It’s worth noting that with these designs, the content usually isn’t very tall – so most recipients would only have to scroll in one direction. This is a good plan; the more you ask your recipient to do in order to read your message, the more likely they are to lose interest).
This just goes to show that it could be worth it to test out different variables in your email creative. Every group is different, and what doesn’t work for one group might create great results for another!
Not only does this email include pertinent information above the fold, the first line is coded in HTML – so the recipient wouldn’t have to enable images to see the text right away.
(click image for full view) |
Designing for the Preview Pane: The 250-Pixel Rule
Many email clients will display the top portion of your email in a preview pane, which recipients will view before deciding to read the rest of your email. The size of this preview pane varies depending on the email client (Hotmail/Outlook 2007/etc.) and the recipient’s individual settings, but you can generally expect that most of your recipients will see the top left 250 pixels of your email in their preview panes. With that in mind, it’s a good idea to include compelling HTML content in this area to entice your recipients to read further.
Stay tuned for further posts covering email design basics! Have a topic in mind? Feel free to drop me a line.
Celeste ODell | Creative Services & Design
